Sunday, May 06, 2012

Book Review: Insurgent

It took me a day to write this review, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about this book.Insurgent starts off exactly where Divergent ended, with Tris, Four (sorry, I refuse to call him Tobias; he'll always be Four to me), Caleb, Peter and Marcus escaping the attacks, and if, like what happened with me, it's been a while since you last read Divergent, you might get a little confused about what's going on, but you'll get back on track pretty fast. The five head to the Amity compound, where the secrets and lies start to bubble to the surface.
Once Tris and Four leave, chased out by Dauntless-Erudite men, the book does not stop. If you want an easy book, with lots of laughter, look somewhere else. What follows is a harrowing tale of two adolescents battling to stay alive within a society that ostracises them because they don't belong in any of the factions. As the hunt for Divergents gets more and more intense, Tris and Four must try to discover who they can trust, who is telling the truth, and who just wants them dead - all while trying to fight the grief. Secrets are revealed, alliances are made, trust is broken, and one family is forever torn apart. The Erudite faction is determined to end all Divergent people, and with half of Tris and Four's adopted faction siding with Erudite, even friends and family may not seem to be who they say they are.

What I really loved about this book, was how Roth portrayed Tris. The girl is 16, saw both of her parents get killed for a "greater good" no one is willing to talk to her about, and had to kill one of her best friends to save her own life. No one in their right mind could blame the girl for being shaken. What I see happen so many times in books, and that makes me a little skeptical, though I've come to accept it, as it happens 99.9% of the time, is that the main character will go through terrible things - lose their entire family, have your best friend killed, be tortured, or anything else in plots, and then they cry for one night, and wake up ready to kick ass again. I'm sorry, but that is just not realistic. When you lose so many people, or even just one person, that's close to you, you do not just rebound that easy. I messes you up. And so yes, I understand Tris's trust issues, I get her apparent desire for suicide. I get it. And I loved that Roth put it in there. It made Tris more than Divergent; it made her human.
That doesn't mean I liked other things. Mostly, I'm giving Insurgent 4.5/5 because I felt that, while the level of depth with Tris was noteworthy, a few other characters were a little lacking, like Caleb and Susan.
And that ending. Holy cow, that ending! It's one thing to talk about cliffhangers. It's another to end a book with one of the biggest plot twists I've ever seen. If nothing else, read Insurgent only to marvel at the amazing skill that is that last plot twist of Insurgent.